Manitoba will increase its provincial minimum wage from $15.80 to $16 on October 1, 2025. The increase looks to reflect Manitoba's 2024 1.1% inflation rate. While Canada's federally regulated minimum wage sits at $17.75.

Opinion: Work on decreasing the price of goods and services instead of increasing minimum wage. Minimum wage cannot go down, so keep it at this point but strive for lower costs to goods and services. Address inflation. Then workers can enjoy more of their $16 hourly wage. Lowering cost to goods and services means involving more producers, increasing supplies, and creating competition.

It may reach to a point where small businesses will no longer afford to pay workers because of expensive costs of material in addition to paying a high minimum wage. If minimum wage becomes unbearable for businesses, workers would be let go or businesses could close. When small businesses close, big businesses (e.g. Amazon, Wal-Mart, etc.) can become bigger. Which creates less competition and increased pricing to goods and services. $15/hr used to look plenty; now we're pushing to $20; but if goods and services are still expensive (i.e. rent, hydro, food) then it creates a loop to increased costs and we're just fooling ourselves with $20/hr.